Under preassure—A harness for guide dogs must suit both dog and owner

January 2, 2014

Guide dogs walk under constant tension. A well-fitting harness is extremely important for the animals. Credit: Bernkopf / Vetmeduni Vienna

A guide dog communicates with a blind person via a harness and its handle. Researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna (Vetmeduni Vienna) have investigated for the first time the forces guide dogs are exposed to during their work. Physiotherapists and movement analysts compared three types of harness to find which is best for the dog and the owner. The results were recently published in the Veterinary Journal.

Guide dogs lend their eyes to blind people, enabling them to find their way around in an environment they cannot see. Guide dogs require about four years of training and fully trained animals can cost over 30,000 Euro. It is thus important for financial reasons as well as because of animal welfare considerations to ensure that guide dogs are comfortable in their work. A proper harness that enables good communication between the blind person and the dog is an important factor in the animal's well-being, while a poorly fitting harness may result in health problems and impaired communication between dog and owner.

The dog's chest experiences the most tension

Barbara Bockstahler, Christian Peham and colleagues examined the distribution of pressure in working guide dogs by placing pressure sensors beneath the harnesses. Eight guide dogs were filmed with a trainer while climbing steps, avoiding obstacles, turning left and right and walking straight ahead. To visualize the movements, the animals, the trainers and the harnesses were equipped with reflective markers. The positions of the markers were recorded by a total of ten cameras.

The results showed that the bottom right of the animals' chests is particularly stressed. As Bockstahler explains, "Guide dogs walk under constant tension. They are usually on their owners' right and in front of them." The scientists found that the pressure on the right side of a dog's chest may equate to up to 10 per cent of the animal's weight. In contrast, the dog's back experiences far less pressure. "It is important for guide dogs to exercise regularly without a harness to compensate for the lopsided pressure they experience in their work", says Bockstahler.

Flexible harnesses cause less stress

Very rigid harnesses enable quick and finely tuned communication between dogs and owners but cause stress to the animals. The more stiffly the harness is anchored to the handle, the more pressure the animal experiences. The most comfortable harness relies on a hook-and-loop connection, which provides the least pressure on the dog, although for long-haired dogs a plastic clip version is favourable. Rigid metal links are the most stressful for the animals and one of the harnesses tested even restricted the movement of the spine and the front limbs. As Peham notes, "The importance of matching the dog to its owner is well known: the blind person should suit the dog not only in character but also in size. But it seems that the choice of harness is also vital. Flexible and adjustable harnesses, e.g. with telescopic handles, are ideal." Of course, the choice of harness is not always straightforward and Peham is quick to recognize the need to extend the group's research, "We should study guide dogs for a longer period of time to find out whether any of the harnesses are associated with long-term problems in the animals. We are still looking for partners and sponsors for the work".

People have an innate need to establish close relationships with other people. But this natural bonding behaviour is not confined to humans: many animals also seem to need relationships with others of their kind. For domesticated ...

Fenced specialty dog parks are offering great social and wellbeing benefits for both dogs and their owners - but they need to be well-designed for maximum gain, says a University of Adelaide veterinarian.

You might think a wagging tail is a wagging tail, but for dogs there is more to it than that. Dogs recognize and respond differently when their fellow canines wag to the right than they do when they wag to the left. The findings ...

So far the specialized skill for recognizing facial features holistically has been assumed to be a quality that only humans and possibly primates possess. Although it's well known, that faces and eye contact play an important ...

Recommended for you

Professor Hyun-Gyu Park of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has developed a technique to analyze various target DNAs using an aptamer, a ...

As an National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded entomologist, Virginia Tech's Paul Marek has to spend much of his time in the field, hunting for rare and scientifically significant species. He's provided NSF with an inside ...

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with members from Washington University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Polish Academy of Sciences has found that problems with RNA appear ...